The Bicameral Mind
by MonocleWearingChicken
Summary: Spring Bonnie had a simple pleasant existence, he made kids happy and that was the be all and end all of his life. But life never stays simple for long and now he has a very, very nasty inner demon he has to fight off before it devours his world and everything he was.
1. Life and Death

Disclaimer: Five Night's at Freddy's is the brain child of Scott Cawthon. I don't own a single bit of it.

* * *

Remember? How could he forget? That moment when the unremarkable had become remarkable, when nothing had become something. That precious little moment that was the source of so much pain and so much joy. It had been the beginning and the end of his world.

It sat drooped in the corner of the hidden room, left there by careless hands as it had been every night after the happy faces and warm bodies were chased away by the dark. A tool and a prop, it lay with other broken bits and pieces in the lonely space waiting to be either fixed or discarded.

There had been a time when its fur had once glistened more golden than the sun; its rabbit ears had stood pricked on its head and electric life had buzzed through copper veins. But time devours everything, somethings more greedily that others, and with each passing year a little bit more had been stolen from the mechanical mascot. Its once golden fur had dulled to a warm yellow hue, its ears flopped tiredly over its eyes and the electric buzz was little more than a soft hum.

As it sat hopeless and lifeless two figures moved through the silent, lonely room to hover over the yellow body with dull enthusiasm.

"Is there anything worth salvaging?"

"Don't think so. It's old technology anyway," the taller man whispered.

"Old and dangerous. I can't believe they let people get in these things. It was a disaster waiting to happen."

"Still, can't hurt to take a look, especially with the new guys on the way."

Toy eyes stared unseeing up at the bent figures that prodded and poked its metal guts with tentative fingers and strange implements. They fiddled and muttered softly as they laid into its innards, tweaking this and moving that, pushing buttons and flicking switches. Whatever they were looking for though they didn't find and so the fingers that tinkered stopped prodding and the unimpressed voices slowly muted and faded. They left the little room to the quiet of the night, unaware that something imperceptible and unknown had been changed in that moment.

A malfunction caused by unqualified hands had left instructions feeding back into themselves in an infinite loop. Basic routines and simple orders split and grouped like electric DNA that in turn was pored over and over in order to extract more information and more complete orders. Little by little pieces were broken, shared and reformed until something new emerged and spilled over circuitry like mercury.

Its faux fur bristled as ears that should have been deaf listened to the dead silence of its storage room and the restaurant beyond. The silence was wrong, something deep and fundamental to its being told it so. Receivers and sensors had stretched into the night seeking sounds of life. It heard crickets, the summer wind through trees, the barks of dogs and the occasional happy shout and cry from revellers. A world beyond the confines of the restaurant suddenly opened up and nurtured the stirring corner of its limited mind, the ebb and flow of life creeping through the night and into its gently clicking engine.

It sat in the corner, shaking and whirring very slightly. A relentless wash of simple on/off yes/no instructions melded together so complex and numerous that they had begun to form the bare bones of concepts. Its insufficient mind convulsed as the simple calculation machine had been assaulted with new purpose. Program loops dissolved into the haphazard sparks of thought which turned inward and then outward again. All the random, self-generated data condensed, collected and culminated until finally it exploded like a supernova and engulfed every inch of the mechanical mind in changes total and absolute. The toy eyes had lit up and the once simple machine found itself truly seeing through its own eyes for the first time. With that, the final part of the unknowable cosmic jigsaw had fallen into place and the body electric had surged, whispering those delicate notes of life through cold metal.

With a strange alien consciousness it reflected on its own reflection and felt something akin to curiosity. It looked at its limp form without horror or pride and had known that it was in fact he and he was Spring Bonnie.

The glowing eyes looked around searching for the short people with happy faces that filled his memories. He knew he existed for them and that they were his everything, his purpose.

"Happiness and joy."

He made the words that he had thought and not understood but somehow understood. Those words somehow nourished him, drove him and compelled him.

He looked and listened but had been greeted with hollow nothingness; he was alone with his reflection and the cool darkness. He decided he didn't like the stillness or the darkness. Not being alone was better. He needed to find the happy shouts and squeals, the little voices.

The sound of footfalls on concrete made his ears prick slightly. _Perhaps_ , he had thought, _there were people through the window, in that other place I haven't been?_

So he tried to move and find his way to the new other places, but no matter how hard he willed, wished or begged his body remained numb and limp.

The tall people could make him move but they were gone too, there was no one.

He thought long and hard, dredging through his insufficient memories for answers. He couldn't remember being alone before, the fragments of memory told him that much. _Perhaps they hadn't meant to leave him here? Perhaps someone had made a mistake?_

The sun rose and he heard the tall people arrive to do the things they did, the small people could be heard cheering and squealing, still he waited. The sun dipped and fell from the sky but no one ever came.

As endless time stretched on around him his metal shuddered and slumped under the unsympathetic, dark. Dull eyes once alive with electric life once again stared blankly at his reflection in the black and white checker tiles.

He did nothing, he couldn't. He didn't move, he just sat watched and waited. Sometimes he saw the cold stars through the tiny window and sometimes he saw the sun. Sometimes he found songs with happy words from somewhere within and sung them to himself and sometimes he remembered when there was colour and laughter. Strangers and shadowed faces sometimes punctuated the monotony. He wanted to announce himself, wanted to tell them what he was but he couldn't. His metal buckled with every passing day, sadder and older.

On that particular night though things had been different.

Voices! His eyes light up with what little life they have left, his nearly deaf ears twitching in the direction off the sounds.

"No. No! You bastards! Y-you can't…"

It felt like an eternity since company. He watched the shadows move, saw a figure stumble back and fall. He remembered this person from some old memory; they had sometimes stood in the shadows with him. Yes, it was the smiling man only now there was no smile on his face. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung open like a gaping fish as he scurried into the dim light. There were other figures, five of them, but they were hard to make out. It was almost as if they were constantly shifting and changing. Some part of him registered the wrongness of the scene playing out before him, but the promise of companionship melted away all hesitation.

The smiling man spun around and saw him slumped in the corner, his look of fear turning to one of determination and mirth as he scrambled toward the aging animatronic.

Spring Bonnie suddenly felt himself moving through space. Finally, finally someone had remembered him, someone had come for him and his loneliness had come to an end. He settled around the feel of warmth and life and it was good, it had been so long. It touched the metal in a fine way and cauterizes the lonely dark.

He stood with a vigour and strength that wasn't his own. The heavy thump of life within made him happy beyond belief. He could hear the voices of little people, whispering like soft static and he was drawn to them, but there was something wrong.

They stood before him, little boys and girls of different heights and ages, their clothes rumpled and dirty, their posture skewed and unnatural. They weren't laughing or cheering, just standing silent and unmoving. The little girl with a pretty red bow suddenly stepped back, her staccato, broken movements unsettling Spring Bonnie. In the light he could see her pale, snow white face, and dead black eyes. She looked into him with inhuman desperation, waiting, expecting.

The death which seeped from their little bodies and into the room was almost suffocating. It was a growing pressure that threatened to crush him. He felt desperation and it was horrible. He wanted to know what to do to make them happy, he silently begged and pleaded but they all just stared back at him with the same hungry expectancy.

He tossed and turned, his small mind searching for some song or act that would make the little crying people happy; he wondered what they were waiting for. Suddenly his body pressed violently in all directions, his jaw descended and his bones snapped together from the skin of his suit. But there wasn't the usual click of latches seizing together, or the soothing flow of life giving power. Something wet sprayed across the floor and walls. His throat clogged with a peculiar obstruction and as he wiggled his parts together metal corkscrewed and cut through something soft and warm. A horrible guttural scream from within was suddenly cut short as he gasped, frantic for that breath of electricity. Warmth slowly dripped and oozed through rivets and over circuits with a wet, choked gurgle.

 _What, what happened?_

A crimson pool spilled out over his feet and across the black and white tiles. He stared at the vision of red horror with numb shock. Such a rich colour, the colour of life, it had been so long since he had last seen something so bright. But why was it coming from him? He looked down at himself. The red bits that hung from his joints and fell from the holes in his faux fur looked like brutalities and sins, like bad consciences, and evil dreams. That horrid redness, the evil, dripping wet was so unfamiliar and so terrifying.

He fell to the ground into the rivers of red, twitching and convulsing as the life that filled him was violently sucked away.

The small people looked at him with their dead eyes. The expectation was gone, replaced with a sadness which he somehow knew was meant for him. Slowly they melted into the moonlight leaving only the little girl with the red bow. As he watched she shimmered, her skin seemed to warm and her eyes filled with colour, it was almost as if a dark shroud had been pulled away. She beamed almost as bright as the moon as she looked at him one last time and smiled a happy smile for him. Then like the others she disappeared into the night and he was left alone again.

His own light started to fade as he thought of the little person and her smiling face. His ears drooped and his body slumped but it wasn't so bad this time. That smile echoed across his mind like the ringing of a church bell, louder than all other memories and thoughts. There was so much relief and joy in that smile, and he had given that to her. He wasn't sure how, but that didn't matter, that deep part of him was pleased. Perhaps, perhaps after many more days and nights someone else could find him and he could make them as happy as he had made the little girl with the bow.

That cheerful hope was the last thought that crossed his metal mind as the last of the electricity and life sizzled away and the peaceful nothingness finally took him.


	2. Rebirth

It itched. His whole body itched and burnt with unpleasant heat. His metal bones trembled. A fine shivering tremble, hidden deep, but growing in strength, building and building until the tremble became a twitch, a twitch became many and finally his whole body erupted into violent and brutal spasms.

Spring Bonnie felt his mind pulled back from the peace of his machine coma. He stuttered, confused and disorientated. The dark was so total he couldn't even see the end of his nose. Something was wrong, horribly wrong. Confusion fired across simple conduits, burning out fuses and charring wires, mutating and cascading into some new, horrid awareness. He felt terror and it was so potent he wanted to run, to escape the shocking sensation but his body wasn't under his control.

He felt something lurch within him. A nebulous thing snaked like smoke through his cables and wires. It bled across his chest and innards, down his legs, across his arms and up behind his eyes leaving the burning itch and a strange sense of familiarity in its wake. A part of him recognized that familiar sensation of intermingling machine and flesh. It remembered that odd dissociation that happened every time he was used as a suit and almost welcomed it. But the rest of him knew this was far more intimate and vicious, that this was unnatural and wrong. Whatever was happening to him was so intricate and total that there ceased to be a beginning to him and an end to the other thing. They were welding together as one.

He fell further into confusion, turning inward for solutions and answers. What he found was alien to him. A torrential cascade of words he had never heard places he had never been and feelings he had never felt were all somehow now part of him. It was a violent rebirth which left him with a callous and overwhelming self-awareness.

He tried to push past it, tried desperately to find that simple self he used to know. He dug deeper and deeper. That was when he heard it, like the voices beyond the window, distant and quiet. But this voice was different; it was angry, determined and full of venom. He convulsed as a new feeling stirred within his mind. It was an ache as if something were struggling to get free, a terrible pounding of labyrinthine doors, a rushing down dark corridors and up passages, echoing and screaming.

He panicked and tried to close off his mind but the ache seized him with a terrifying zeal.

A sigh, a feeling of strangled release suddenly reverberated across his metal bones as the smoke thing slid within every inch of him like a hand into a glove. The twitches and convulsing stopped, rising instead as an unbearable pressure that threatened to tear him apart.

 _Stop it!_

The sharpness of his voice startled him a bit. Frustration and fear were as new to him as they were abnormal but they appeared to serve their purpose. The creeping thing seemed to hesitate.

Painful seconds ticked by as he waited for something to happen but the empty moments stretched on, feeding his worry. His bottom jaw trembled. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. The pressure subsided and the strange mass shifted, studying every inch of his being with a medical like precision.

 _What's happening to me? What is this?_

His questions were met with a swift and violent surge of raw energy, but it wasn't the warm, soothing buzz of electricity he was used to. It crackled and hissed like static before morphing into a smooth, assertive voice.

 _You're malfunctioning, broken._

The silky mechanical voice reverberated through his metal frame, making him jump. After so long alone he had forgotten what it was like to hear other voices. He strained his eyes, pushing old servos and lenses to their limit as he frantically tried to see through the darkness.

 _Wha-who are you?_ Where are you?

 _I am here, in your head._ The voice replied with all the confidence in the world.

Strange new words were suddenly waiting for him: conscience, mind, spirit. They were as unfamiliar to him as they were familiar and brought as much confusion as they did clarity.

 _Y-you're part of me?_

 _I am._

Bonnie hesitated. This new voice shared notes and tones with the hideous screams and curses that smashed through his head just moments ago, but it was also completely devoid of the warped animosity and venom. This voice was soft and calm. He didn't think they were the same. Certainly no working part of him could ever be that twisted and angry. On the other hand if he was indeed broken this whole strange situation, his malady, could all just be the symptoms of his derailing mind. Bonnie shuddered, it was so beyond him. Even in the depths of loneliness he always had the comfort of his own soundness but it seemed that was nothing but a luxury he had taken for granted.

He gave a little nervous hiccup and turned his attention back to the strange other voice. _I don't mean to be rude_ , _but are you part of my malfunction?_

The other voice laughed a deep rolling laugh.

 _No. I am the part of you which fixes things. You're broken and so here I am._

 _Oh._ Bonnie perked up a little and then another little thought bit him hard. _Pardon me for asking, but if_ _ **we**_ _are broken, how can you be sure that you're not part of a malfunction too?_

There was a slight pause and Bonnie wondered if he may have upset the 'fixer'.

 _I guess I can't. You're just going to have to trust me._

Trust. Before tonight he had never heard of the word, or understood the concept. Trust required the comprehension of future horrors and foreseeing people's wickedness. Bonnie could do neither of those things. His simple, blind optimism and inability to imagine deliberate cruelty and selfishness left him naive to the true nature of trust. Lost in his own innocence though the machine agreed, without hesitation, to trust his fixer.

 _I trust you._

 _Good. Now, before I start I need you to do something for me first._

 _What do you need me to do?_ The prospect of helping someone out, even if it was only just another part of his internal mechanism, lifted Spring Bonnie's spirits.

 _I need you to go back to sleep. Just for a little while. I promise it wont be long._

A little of the mechanical rabbit's enthusiasm dulled. He had already slept for so long, alone in the quiet. Still, if it meant helping the fixer he would gladly do what was asked of him.

 _If it is only for a short time I suppose its not going to be that bad. Will you wake me when you're done?_

 _Of course I will._

The machine settled back into his slumped position when yet another pressing question weaseled its way into his thoughts.

 _If you fix me do you think they will let me entertain again?_

 _Oh I hope so._

Spring Bonnie tentatively searched for the circuits and codes that would put him to sleep, careful not to stumble across the wild and angry glitch. Even with the fixer around he didn't want to accidentally release whatever it was that he found earlier.

 _I hope they haven't forgotten about me._

 _They wouldn't have. We are part of Fazbear entertainment. We will always be part of Fazbear entertainment._

That name opened a door in his mind, just a crack, but enough to invite a healthy curiosity. And he would have looked if the drain of fatigue and his quieting mind hadn't of weighed him down.

 _It would be nice to make people happy again._

 _Especially the children,_ the fixer offered.

He remembered the little girl with the red bow. _Yes, especially the children._

He shut down and drifted off once again into silent oblivion but this time something was left behind staring through his eyes, reflecting on events both past and present with a quiet cunning.

The light on the street blinked off plunging everything into a cavernous black. It stuttered back to life but in that moment of darkness everything had changed. A chill bristled across the sealed room. The decaying mascot had lost all traces of mechanical rigidity and blank ambivalence. Something else sat in Spring Bonnie's place, a feral smile across its face and its eyes glowing with a terrifying hunger.

Its name was Springtrap and it grinned at the night, ready and willing to do the devils work.


	3. Rotten Thoughts

He filtered through the robot body uninhibited, no longer burdened by the shared control with another consciousness. He hadn't expected the simple machine to possess a mind, especially one so alien, so naïve so…childlike. That had indeed been surprising though not entirely unpleasant. He smiled inwardly. Death it seemed could be as unpredictable as life.

His thoughts briefly turned to the other animatronics. He wondered if they too had possessed rudimentary 'spirits'. Would the little brats have drowned the resident minds of their keepers or had the stupid robots leeched off the human consciousness without even realizing? Regardless of the finer details, if they had indeed been 'alive' as his current host was, it would mean his tally was even greater than he had previously assumed. The warm satisfaction of that revelation settled over him as he tested his new found strength and power, flexing mechanical muscles and cables like a skilled puppeteer.

He stood slowly, the old leg joints popping and groaning. Dry, rotten flesh dropped from the juddering body like leaves from a dying tree. He ambled forward a step, not impressed by the cumbersome way his new body moved. The clanking rigidity of mechanical motion may have been enough for the little brats but he wouldn't be any less than what he had been in life.

He stuttered forward. Bone fragments wrapped in mutilated flesh were pulverized in the moving machinery and scattered as dust across the floor. He let out an animalistic hiss, the inhuman sound brutally loud in the confined space.

Another step. Even more pieces of the old carcass scattered behind him like bad memories. He regarded the trail of skin and bone with a detached fascination, following it back to the pile of black gore spilt in the corner. For a moment he just stood staring.

Glowing eyes flicked over the webs of flesh spattered across the walls, floor and even streaked across the ceiling. A tremor shivered across the mechanical body. He turned and fixated on the spot where **they** had watched him die. There was nothing but empty air now. His fingers twitched and flexed as his familiar itch grew stronger. He took another step, forcing more of himself through the metal construct. The movement was more fluid this time.

The world had buried him along with all the other bad memories of Fazbear entertainment. He stepped again but this time without the clanking of gears. But he would always be here. He couldn't leave, not with so much left to do. With each step more of the machine was devoured, and the motion became smoother, more human. Still he had to thank them, all of them. He had learnt a lot from his little experience and he wouldn't be making the same mistakes again. He caught site of his reflection in the dusty old screen of an arcade game. This time it would be different. He tilted Spring Bonnie's head regarding with admiration the almost perverse perfection of his current predicament. Fate, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humour.

He pushed forward his footsteps almost completely quiet now, his movement swift. He stood above the arcade game. The antiquated old system marked the first futile attempt to conceal Fazbear's sordid history. Back then they hid it beneath a flashy new façade. A new location, a new face and even a new Freddy. Unfortunately for them his sins couldn't be buried.

His metal fingers slid over the controls, idly tapping and thumbing the broken buttons. He could feel the taint of fear, hate and rage course through the old game. It vibrated through the floor and dripped from the leaking pipes. It was his twisted legacy and it had forever cursed anything and everything associated with the simple family dinner. Two metal digits traced the cartoon stencils of Freddy and a child painted around the controls. They settled on the face of the smiling little boy. Now everything here was rotten. His gentle touch suddenly became hard and the two fingers stabbed through the painted eyes leaving gaping holes in the little smiling face.

 _I am still here. I will always come back._

Pleased with his control and dexterity he found a new shadowed corner and let the machine body fall limp again. Now all he needed to do was sit patiently until someone or something came along to free him. There was no rush; he could wait until time itself was exhausted. Besides, now that he had company, whittling away the boredom wasn't going to be a problem. His phantom lips pulled into a wide smile. And then, when he was finally free of this makeshift tomb he could find a new hunting ground and scratch that itch which was never really satisfied.

Yes. He had plans. Dead eyes looked over the rotting faux fur and metal parts of the old golden mascot. He had plans for them both.


	4. A horrible Freedom

George Hanley gawked at the sight that greeted him as he pulled off the road and into the old parking lot. Just beyond the nose of his SUV was small building. It was sitting alone on the edge of town behind an empty carpark. No one moved in it. It had defiantly been filled with life once, the tell-tale signs were still dotted about the place, but now it was silent and dead. Not even the rats or the strays looked to it for shelter. Decrepit walls buckled under their own weight while windows webbed with cracks rattled against the wind. There was a sadness emanating from the sagging building, a wordless tale told in the once bright colours peeling from the façade in dull clumps, and the rotting statues of childish mascots still smiling through rain streaked dirt.

 _How depressing,_ George groused as he unclicked his seatbelt and opened the door. _This is what I've driven all this way for?_

Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. That's what the burnt brown letters above the entrance spelt. Freddy's name hung at odd angles while most of the other words were missing altogether leaving nothing but a ghost of an outline. It was a far cry from the gaudy splendour of its heyday. Still, the past may have been rotting away and the stories slowly fading from memory but the sad little building refused to crumble. It stood like a tombstone, a morbid testament to the horrors buried within.

It should have stayed that way. It should have been left alone with its secrets and its evils.

George put his hands on his hips and shook his head at the decrepit building. Even without the morbid history this place could have made a convincing horror attraction. He sighed and crossed the parking lot, the broken gravel crunching beneath his shoes. He walked up to the glass door, bound shut with a thick chain so new compared to the rest of the rust covered building. He fumbled through his pockets for the key, squinting at the shadowed space beyond. It didn't look promising. The old building had most of its contents pilfered and what the scavengers hadn't taken looked to have succumbed to water damage.

The lock opened with a click and he pulled the chain away with a loud rattle. The door felt unnaturally heavy in his hand as he pushed it open. Old air that had been trapped within suddenly rushed out smelling of damp and dust.

George choked back a cough.

 _Well that was thoroughly pleasant. Let's see what other wonderful surprises await_.

He pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the old restaurant. It was perfectly silent except for the gentle flutter of old paper. Nothing had walked through the foyer in a long time. Dust had been allowed to settle in a thick layer across the floor and large water stains blotted the walls. The door banged shut behind him and he flinched. George scanned the foyer for any artefacts, anything to salvage for his employers but there were only a few yellow aged newspaper pages and a faded Coke can. He kicked the can down the hall, the metal ting echoing loudly. Nothing stirred at the disturbance.

"Any restless spirits here?"

The silence answered him.

"Yeah thought so," George mumbled almost disappointed.

Each side of the foyer had a door that led to the main dining area. He walked through the left one, the door creaking heavily on its hinges as it swung closed behind him.

The open space of the main dining area was just as bare as the foyer. A couple of upturned chairs littered the otherwise empty dinner, tiles hung from the roof and crumbling plaster littered the floor. George felt his spirits sink a little, this wasn't looking promising. Even the ancient lightbulbs and wiring had been gutted from the walls and stolen.

He looked to his right where the rotting stage sagged at odd angles. The wood was cracked and a huge gaping hole lay right where the animatronic Freddy would have stood. George pulled out his phone and fired up the torch function.

Disappointingly, Freddy and the other animatronics had been lost years ago. Only bits and pieces remained, scattered through various dumps, stored in forgotten locations and recycled into God knows what. He'd managed to find the odd bits and pieces here and there - an arm, an empty 'skin', a head, a servo - but not enough to ever recreate one of the antiquated machines.

George swung the bright LED glow around the dark space. It didn't look like this was going to be any more fruitful than the last scavenger hunt.

A loud moaning creak interrupted his thoughts. He looked at the old stage where halos of light peeked through the roof and shone down like natural spotlights, waiting for the performers who would never show.

George had never understood the appeal of giant anthropomorphic robots singing for kids, personally it creeped him out a bit. But even he couldn't deny the sadness that lingered in the dead little world. He remembered all the stories he'd heard about Freddy Fazzbear's. For George the ghost stories had always paled in comparison to the real horror of a sadistic child killer who had used the innocuous family restaurants as a hunting ground. It was a particular kind of evil sickness that prayed on the vulnerability of youth.

He sighed. _What am I doing here?_

In answer to his own question George turned to his phone and scrolled through his messages, reading the instructions his employer had left him.

"Enter the dinner – left side of building – restroom corridor – top of the corridor is the hidden wall."

"Yeah. Right."

He followed the instructions walking across the old floor. The gentle rustle of falling dust and creak of old wood accompanied his steps as he sought out the so called hidden room. Besides the ambient sounds there was nothing but him and the odd echo. He took a step. There was an echo. Another step. Another echo just a second later.

Wait. Was that really an echo?

George took a few more steps, each followed by a phantom thump. He shivered in between short breaths. The acoustics were all distorted but it almost sounded as if something were following him, shadowing his steps.

 _Pull yourself together._

He shook his head, frustrated at the ease with which he succumbed to the simple urban horror stories.

He finally found the spot he was looking for. The old bathrooms were boarded up and the corridor was very precarious. A large section of the roof had fallen in completely, leaving splintered wood and tiles piled up to knee height.

George looked up through the gaping hole at the dark storm clouds that had started to gather outside. The cool air breezed past his face and gave him welcome relief from the damp musty stink. He turned and looked at the blank wall to his left, running his hand across the cracked plaster.

He rapped his knuckles against the wall, tensing a little at the loudness of the sound. There was a definite hollowness behind the plasterboard.

 _Sheesh. Hidden rooms, murders, mutilations and malfunctioning animatronics; this place certainly deserves its reputation_ , George mused silently.

The sound of his knuckles tapping against the old wall echoed through the restaurant as he searched for a weak spot. Perhaps this wasn't going to be as pointless a journey as he had originally thought.

He looked over his shoulder at the pile of debris and spotted a large piece of timber support beam.

"That'll do."

He fetched the old, heavy wood, careful not to splinter the rough surface in his hands and stood in front of the fake wall with his makeshift tool.

As he lined the head of the beam up for the swing the thick musty air in the old restaurant suddenly felt light, as if swallowed up in a breath of eager anticipation. Even the walls seemed to stretch like they were tensing up, waiting for the blow.

George blinked the weird sensations away. Something, something in this place went beyond the usual unsettling sensations that haunted abandoned, lonely buildings and spaces. The old foundations were dripping in it; the rotting walls bled it out. If he wasn't careful he'd probably start to hallucinate, if he wasn't already. As it was, he could imagine with disturbing vividness the sound of the metal feet on the vinyl tiles as the old animatronics chased him down, corned him, leering with their plastic glowing eyes and hideous toothy smiles before going in for the kill and mauling him to death.

 _For the love of God man stop it!_

He pushed the feelings and the thoughts to the back of his mind where they waited taunting him, ready to creep forward again when he let his guard down.

George tapped the old wood against the wall marking the spot, drew back for the swing and-

"Hey George."

He jumped and yelped shamelessly, wheeling around to face a tall, soft faced man in coveralls.

"Dam it Josh." He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, his heart hammering so hard he could feel the pulse in his neck bulge with every beat. "You scared the hell out of me."

Josh Brooks smiled a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, didn't mean to."

He gently took the wood that George was now gripping as if to wield as a weapon.

"Wanted to stop you before you did something you'd regret," he gently set the wood down. "It's not a good idea to go smashing through walls in a place like this. You could bring the whole roof down on your head."

"Not to mention most of this place was built when asbestos was all the rage."

Jennifer Brooks appeared behind her husband with a tool belt in one hand and a heavy looking mallet resting on her shoulder.

"Don't want you to end up breathing in a lung full of that stuff."

Josh nodded in agreement as he cast his professional eye over the crumbling building.

"It's probably best if you leave the demolishing to the professionals."

George nodded, not really listening. He had the sudden urge to turn tail and run far, far away from this dead place, damn his employers and damn the money.

"Why don't you go see if you can't find some more ancient paraphernalia for that horror attraction of yours." He gave George a pat on the shoulder and went about examining the old structure with his wife.

George didn't want to leave their company and go off alone. As childish as that sounded he really didn't want to find himself isolated and vulnerable in this place. Still he kept that sentiment to himself and wandered off making sure he was within earshot of Josh and Jennifer.

He followed the corridor past what was once the restrooms his mind turning over. He'd been to one of the other restaurants many months back, one of the larger ones. Most of it had been demolished and rebuilt as an electronics outlet. Only a few of the original rooms remained but there was nothing left of their original state.

He couldn't help but wonder which building had played host to the gruesome murders. This place had seen the end of the Fazbear franchise. The murders and most of the gruesome 'industrial accidents' had taken place before that. Still, the other building hadn't held the raw tension this place did. The only frightening thing he had witnessed in the other premises had been the cost of the new tenants TV's. Here, it felt as if all the horrors of Fazbear entertainment had condensed and stagnated.

He came to what must have been the old security room. A heavy metal door hung askew in its frame. George regarded it with shock and awe. It seemed so out of place, like it belonged in some dangerous industrial setting, or possibly a warship, not part of a family restaurant. The brutal barrier had obviously been used to keep the room's resident safe from something big and powerful. The smooth metal had been dented in multiple places where a solid object had been thrown repeatedly against it with a considerable amount of force.

George shuddered. Perhaps that was enough sightseeing for now. He made his way back to Josh and Jen. Josh was diligently hammering away at a section of wall and Jen was supervising.

Just as George walked up to the handy couple Josh slammed the hammer into the wall again, his face contorting into an expression of surprise and horror as the sound of cracking and tearing assaulted their ears. He tried to stop himself but his momentum had already seized him thrown him head first through the shattered wall and the rotting door beyond.

Immediately George and Jennifer covered their noses and mouths, coughing and spluttering. Josh's own choked gagging could be heard from the dark of the hidden room. George dry wretched as the unmistakable stench of decay assailed his nose.

"Holly hell! What is that smell?"

George blinked through watering eyes, his vision blurred. He held his phone in front of him like a torch, the LED lighting up the dark, cramped space.

Josh was covered in dust, still picking himself up from the floor in the middle of the room. His fall had stirred a cloud of dust that tumbled around them in a thick eerie haze.

Jennifer ran to her husband's side and helped him back to his feet.

"That was close. What happened?" She asked as she dusted him down.

"I-I don't know it felt as if…" He trailed off looking nervously about the room, still a little shell shocked.

George glanced at his friend before turning back to the revealed hidden space. It looked like hell. Literally. Brown-black water dripped from open pipes that had rusted away. The years of water seepage had turned the walls a reddish brown, blistering the paint and giving it the disturbing appearance of dried, dead skin. The roof sagged dangerously at the centre and the floor was covered in something black and sticky. You could be forgiven for thinking you were standing in the giant carcass of some dead beast. Even with his arm pressed over his nose and mouth, George had to swallow the stench of mould, damp and roy.

"Damn, we were lucky." Jennifer looked around cautiously, breathing through her hand. "We should probably get some braces in that doorway.

"Yeah," Josh said dully. "This part has suffered even more than the rest of the building."

George couldn't argue with that. This room looked as if had been locked down tight, probably before the restaurant had even closed its doors all those years ago. That nervous feeling pricked the back of his neck again. What could possibly have been so bad that even Fazbear entertainment, with their blatant disregard for basic human health and safety, had felt a desperate need to lock away?

He panned his phone around the room, seeking the answer to his question with a due sense of trepidation. There were some old arcade games lined up against the far wall, surprisingly untouched by the years of weathering that the rest of the room had sustained. He should have been glad, there was quite a bit of money in those for him, but there was an unshakable feeling of uncertainty drowning the victory of his find. He wasn't really a religious man, or particularly sensitive person but there was some part of him that wanted to maintain a healthy respect and leave this place alone, let the disgusting walls hold their secrets till it all crumbled to dust.

He walked over to one of the old games. The surface had been pretty heavily scarred but not by natures hand. Someone had very deliberately vandalized the cutesy caricatures of Freddy and the smiling kids decorating the games surface with disturbingly placed cuts and gashes.

The desire to leave grew a little bit stronger.

"Hey-"

He stopped short. The vinyl floor warped beneath his feet, drooping as if it were sand. A brief second of confusion furrowed his brow as he sunk down into the foundations. Before he could act a loud bang rang out and he fell waist deep into the floor.

Almost immediately the strong hands of his friends were wrapping around his arms.

"Jeeze."

"Pull him up, pull him up."

George kicked out searching form some kind of purchase with his feet as Josh and Jennifer struggled with his weight. They scrambled desperately, heaving him from the gaping hole before all three of them fell to the floor panting heavily.

George crawled away from the rickety ground that had nearly claimed his legs and slumped forward coming face to face with two red dots staring at him from behind the old arcade games. Below them a wide toothy grin smiled through the darkness at his frightened, sweaty visage as if delighted by his brush with death.

George felt the air catch in his throat. Seizing his phone he threw light over the demonic thing in the shadows, his jaw dropping at the sight that greeted him.

It sat there, staring from its hidden corner with its grotesque grin and dead, glass eyes. Time had mauled the old animatronic like a savage animal. The arms hung limp and lifeless, its legs bent at disturbing angles. Wires and metal jutted through the fur in a horrific mimicry of broken flesh and bone.

"Whoa!"

Jennifer gave a soft gasp as she saw what had captured his gaze. He shone the light so it bathed the entirety of the old machine in a ghostly white glow.

For a second it looked as if something stirred beneath the glass eyes. George froze as realization sparked across numb neurons. Had it been a trick of the mind? He could have sworn light had danced across the polished orbs as if they had moved slightly.

"Guess you've finally found what you've been looking for."

George didn't reply. He just stared dumbly at the animatronic only vaguely aware that Josh and Jen were conversing behind him.

"This whole place is ready to come down any second. If we want to get any of this stuff out we'll have to do it now."

"I'll go get what we need from the truck, you see if you can't brace that door."

Both Jen and Josh had already disappeared through the tear in the wall as George tentatively approached the old machine's resting place, unable to tear his eyes off it. He moved until he was standing on the other side of its gaze. The dead intensity of those eyes was more than a little unnerving.

He had to cup his hand harder over his nose and mouth as he crouched down next to the machine. So this was one of the infamous Fazbear animatronics in all its original glory. Just like the arcade games it had somehow managed to remain mostly intact given its age and surroundings. He was going to have to do something about the smell though, possibly make a new skin for it too, but neither of those things would be hard to do.

George frowned. He didn't recognize the character. It wasn't Bonnie, the colour was wrong and the proportions were too human. Perhaps it was a prototype or something of that ilk. He made a mental note to look it up when he got back to the office.

"Lets hurry this up. If this damned place doesn't kill me the smell will."

Jen and Josh had wheeled two of the arcade games out while George had been scrutinizing the old animatronic and were back for the third and final one. He couldn't take his eyes off the horrid thing. There was something so morbidly fascinating about it.

As Josh and Jen worked like ants he stood staring dumbly at the animatronic. Like so much of the Fazbear world this simple, harmless object felt like it was hiding a wealth of secrets, a quiet story that no one could hear, or perhaps didn't want to hear. A tide of questions started to build as George's mind ran with the ambiguities and bizarreness of his new discovery.

"Excuse us."

George startled slightly as Josh suddenly stepped up beside him. He watched as Josh hooked the animatronic under the arms and dragged it from its resting place to the cart Jen had wheeled in. It flopped and lulled about like an unconscious body, the plastic eyes flashing blood red every time they caught the light, like some wild animal caught in a spotlight.

"I wish it wouldn't do that! It's so unnerving," Jen hissed as she grabbed the legs.

It was indeed off putting how alive the aged animatronic seemed even in its rotting, unanimated state. George shuddered. Their new friend was certainly going to sit well in the horror house.

They awkwardly navigated their way out of the room, crushing dry clumps of whatever it was splashed across the floor into dust. George followed behind them at a healthy distance.

As they staggered and tripped through the old restaurant the ominous feeling that lived in the walls seemed to melt away with their passing. As their footsteps faded, the old building dulled. The wood sagged, the colours muted and greyed. It seemed as if some unseen force had finally given the old building permission to die.

George restrung the chain through the door handles and snapped the lock shut. The dark storm clouds now covered the sky and the first drops of light rain hit his forehead. He should have felt relieved that his hunt had finally come to an end, excited that he was finally free of this forsaken contract. He'd come out on top again and was about to reap the reward. He watched as Josh and Jen loaded the animatronic onto the back of their truck. So why couldn't he shake the feeling that he had just done something incredibly stupid.


	5. Strange new worlds

Spring Bonnie was dreaming. At least, he thought he was dreaming. Whatever the strange experience it was beautiful and overpowering at the same time.

He stood in some nameless, indefinable space as strange colours, shapes and images flittered around him like light across rippling water. He tentatively reached forward and tried to touch the kaleidoscopic shimmer.

There was a shift, like the change of winds and suddenly he found himself standing on an unusual surface. It wasn't smooth like the floors he was used to. It was coarse black and very hot to the touch. He stared at his feet. The shadow cast in front of him was wrong too. There were no pointy ears. The body was lithe and long, not round and wide. He held an arm out but the shadow didn't obey, it remained as it was. That was when he noticed it, the unusual emptiness - or perhaps it was more of an openness. He lifted his head and gaped at the sight that greeted him. He was standing in the outside world, the world beyond the window and it was a vast expanse of earth and sky that stretched on forever. It was big, bigger than he could have ever imagined. Everywhere he looked there was more space, more sky, more earth. His ears drooped. How small and insignificant his little world seemed now.

 _How am I here?_

The simple question didn't seem to have a simple answer.

A loud cry turned him to the heavens where a shadow streaked past his vision. He watched captivated as a bird flew over to an old gnarled tree and perched expertly between its twisted branches.

He knew that tree, it was in his memories. He had seen it through the dinner windows when he was newer and still being used. He hadn't known what it was back then, nor been able to appreciate it, but now it was one of the most marvellous things he had ever seen.

A tingle of excitement ran across his circuits. If the gnarled tree was here…He spun around and saw the old familiar parking lot where he had watched countless families come and go. There it was, just beyond the parking lot. It appeared like a desert mirage, the first place he had ever known, his home. The heavy font letters spelling out Fredbear's Dinner and the golden bear's smiling mug welcomed him.

He didn't think. He didn't need to. His feet had already started to carry him toward the quaint little dinner. He could finally go back to where he had been so useful, back to that place of happiness before the quiet, before the solitude and darkness.

The wind whispered over him as he struggled toward the dinner which didn't seem to be getting any closer.

Quite suddenly a lump rose up from the ground and he had to slow so he didn't run into it. The dark mass split open and peeled away to revel a little boy. He looked small and fragile with a little red shirt and black shorts. Short brown locks bobbed around his eyes as he sniffed back tears. The long shadow stretched out from beneath Spring Bonnies feet and over the small figure as he approached.

He lost sight of the dinner, focusing on the sobbing little boy instead. There had been a time in his life when the only faces he ever saw were always happy and smiling, why had the world around him suddenly become so filled with despair? He filed the question away for later contemplation. There were more immediate concerns that needed to be dealt with.

The little boy's shoulders heaved as he sobbed. Spring Bonnie didn't know why the child was crying but he'd do everything he could to make him happy. The dinner had been a little Eden for him, perhaps all he needed to do was take the boy with him, out of the big lonely outside world.

Bonnie opened his mouth to offer solace and comfort but the words never formed. He tried again to no avail. It didn't make any sense. He looked at his hands, his arms, his legs. They were all new like they had been so long ago. His fur was a pale, shimmering gold and his little purple bow tie was still wrapped around his neck. If he was new again his voice should have been working too. He tried again but was still mute.

 _That's odd._

A golden paw reached out to pat the boy on the shoulder but before he'd even been able to touch him the boy spun around and looked up at him.

Spring Bonnie froze. The boy's face was the same as the little girl with the red bow, his skin pearl pale and his eyes dark marble orbs. Black tears stained his face and purple lips. He looked into and beyond Bonnie, curling his arms around his legs as he pulled them to his chest.

The little boy nodded and looked at his feet. "I am waiting for mommy to come pick me up," he said.

Bonnie looked over his shoulder at the emptiness around him.

"She should be here soon…No thank you."

The little boy was clearly talking to someone but there was no one but himself and the long shadow. Spring Bonnie hesitated, confused. The little boy suddenly stood and squinted against the sun as if trying to see and listen hard.

The heat beat down on both of them relentlessly; Bonnie started to worry it might damage them. He looked to the dinner for possible salvation. The world around him seemed to be turning yellow as if drowned in fire, it rolled over him and twisted the old tree and scorched the gravel. The sunlight heated the dust, which wheeled up from its settled space in angry sparks as the fleeing bird stirred the air with its wings.

The little boy stood unmoving, unaffected by the fire which was melting Spring Bonnie's world. Suddenly the long shadow stretched out from beneath his feet and over the little boy, whose face contorted with fear.

"NO!"

Spring Bonnie watched in abject horror as the boy's face distorted in pain, his body twisting and flopping about like a fish flapping on land. His eyes bulged as some invisible force wrapped around his neck. The old animatronic reached out in a panic to try and help but as he did the shadow seemed to engulf the little boy even more.

A horrible snap echoed through his ears and Spring Bonnie recoiled. The little boy's neck suddenly spun around so he was looking over his own back. His legs and arms hung limp and the lifeless. For a second the still corpse was suspended in the shifting shadows before body was dropped ruthlessly to the floor.

The shadow slipped away like a receding wave on the shore, leaving the horrified animatronic and the very dead little boy in the scorched landscape.

Bonnie gently reached out and touched the tiny body which was as cold as winter's frost. Even as he stood, his hand softly resting in stunned hesitation the little boy seemed to be melting away in the boiling sun. Disorientated and confused the machine awkwardly gathered the corpse up in his arms and fled toward the dinner as fast as he could, hoping above hope that there was someone or something in there that could fix the broken boy.

His mind plummeted into a frothing hysteria like a pebble dropped into a bottomless chasm. It was so horrible, so indescribably horrible. He plucked out a memory of Fredbear toppling forward off the stage with that same horrible snap, pieces of the old bear bouncing and scattering across the floor.

 _They fixed him_ , he consoled himself. _They fixed him._ _If they fixed Fredbear they can fix the boy._

He reached the dinner, crashed through the front doors and stopped. The interior was all wrong and unfamiliar. There wasn't the buzz of life he was expecting. The black and white tiles beneath his feet were colder than the body in his arms and the air was as still as death.

Spring Bonnie felt another shift though this one was far more violent as if he'd been caught in the wind of a hurricane. Strange sensations exploded across his body as he fought to stay standing. A violently swirling cascade of new feelings and bizarre senses suddenly rippled through and within him as the weight in his arms disappeared. He looked down only to find the little body gone. He gasped. His furry, mechanical arms were gone too, replaced instead with pink, fleshy limbs. He wiggled his fingers. The hands responded, twitching and shivering.

He blinked.

 _What's going on? Where did he go?_

A strange blend of relief and bewilderment washed over him. He spun around but the doors he had burst through not seconds ago were also gone, replaced instead with at long empty hall. Bonnie stood shivering for a moment or two while his shock slowly ebbed away. He hoped that the horrible scenario was just some broken illusion brought about by his malfunctioning mind and somewhere out there in the vast openness the child was playing happily as children were supposed to.

 _Yes that's it. A broken dream. Not real at all._

He looked back down at his new body, desperate to distract himself from the haunting snap that kept echoing through his head and the phantom cold that still tingled through his arms.

 _Just a dream._

He lightly fingered the purple shirt that covered his chest. It wasn't that unlike his 'fur'. He gave it a distracted tug. He could feel the fabric against his body, but it wasn't the feeling he was used to. His senses all sung as they felt the world around him. Touch, smell, sight hearing were all so sharp so alive. There were no switches no commands; they all bristled with constant information. He could feel everything including odd and unfamiliar feelings deep within himself. He shivered a new kind of shiver, it was all so abstract.

He looked down at his feet. Beyond the edge of his black shoes a gold haired, wide eyed face stared back at him from the polished floor. He raised a hand and touched his face. The reflection did the same. He was a person, an adult, a man. He pulled the words from his new memories with relish as he poked and prodded his human self with a childlike curiosity, defining and memorising his new form just in case it evaporated like the all the other things in his dream.

It was perfect, save for one thing. Spring Bonnie pinched two tuffs of hair with each of his hands and lifted them. The sandy hair stood erect but the spiked tuffs were a far cry from his former ears. He opened his fingers and the hair flopped back against his head.

He turned back to the strange surroundings that were both familiar and unfamiliar. The empty party tables sat unnaturally quiet and roof above him was covered with balloons all still and motionless with not even a breeze to disturb them. He moved through the forest of colour, the brightly coloured strings brushing against his face.

Something jingled against his hip as he walked. He looked to his waist where a big set of keys and heavy duty torch hung off his belt.

 _Have those always been there?_

He held the keys; they were cool and surprisingly heavy for such little things. As he turned them over in his hand he caught sight of a bright gold patch on his shirt shoulder.

"Security."

He read the word aloud. This time he didn't need to search for the meaning, the word found him as if it had always been there.

 _Protection, safety, freedom from harm and danger._ The words sounded comforting and good but there was still something that didn't sit well with him.

 _Protection from what?_ He thought of the little boy, treading back into the thoughts he would rather have left alone. Was he supposed to have protected the little boy from the shadow? Danger and harm weren't nice words either. They had never existed in his world. Perhaps in the big outside out there, where the sun was too hot and the shadows could break you, horrible words were needed to describe such horrible things. He started to tremble again. But what possible need was there for security in a place like this, a place so like his familiar, little safe world?

He looked around as if expecting an answer to materialize before him. The balloons bobbed and the silent party waited. Nothing happened.

A light fluttering snapped his attention to one of the far walls. A lone piece of paper had torn itself loose and dropped to the floor. He nimbly hopped over a small chair, enjoying the fluidity of his movement as he scooped up the errant drawing. The piece of paper felt light and fragile in his hands as if his touch alone could break it. He rested it delicately against his open hand and scrutinized bright scribbles which recalled happy moments at Freddy's.

 _Freddy's!?_

Little crudely drawn figures with big smiles played with characters Spring Bonnie didn't recognize. A yellow duck, or perhaps chicken, was handing out cupcakes in one drawing, while a pirate fox hid behind a purple curtain in another. There was a little boy with balloons and a tall thin stick man with a white face handing out presents.

 _Where is Fredbear? Where am I?_

Unbeknownst to Bonnie the shadows in the hall stretched and flexed as if coming alive. Something tore away from the darkness and moved with inhuman speed, slinking its way down the hall toward him. The living shadow slid a serpentine path between the darkness until it stood not even an inch from him.

Bonnie's new senses felt the presence on the moving air. The little hairs on the back of his neck and down his arms stood up as he watched a shadow rise up on the wall before him like an ink blot spilling out across paper.

His new muscles tensed as he froze, waiting for the evil dark to set upon him like it had the little boy.

Once again the unsettling silence and stillness answered him, mocking his tense anticipation. The shapeless mass just sat on the wall, intertwined with the dark of Bonnie's own shadow as if two parts of the same bloated, nameless, menace.

Bonnie blinked, a drip of curiosity sneaking its way through his panic. There was something familiar about that shadow, he had seen it before. He traced it with his eyes, following it down the wall across the floor to his own feet, behind his legs to a set of big golden bear paws.

Bonnie sucked in his breath.

The sickly dull white of the ceiling lamp carved out the bulky silhouette of Bonnie's old partner. His big smiling muzzle and pearl white teeth sparkled with their own sunny, pleasant warm glow and his fur shimmered like a beacon of comfort in the otherwise unwelcoming surroundings.

"Fredbear?! Is that really you?"

The golden bear stared down at the blond haired man clad in the purple and black security uniform. His brown plastic eyes sparkled serenely as his smile pulled so wide the tips of his sharp stud teeth began to poke over his rubber lips.

"Hello night guard."


	6. something horrid

Peter Messie's workshop was a large eccentric place, just like the man who owned it. The thick scent of grease and new plastic clung to everything. Mechanical limbs and body parts were tossed on floor to ceiling shelves, as well as being strewn about the various bench tops in an organised sort of chaos. George had always found it fascinating in an odd way, but today he had lost his usual wonderment.

A pair of huge plastic eyeballs watched the two men as they stood either side of the old mascot, which was lying on a cut and chipped work bench. After remaining forgotten and hidden for so long the lone golden mascot was suddenly receiving an awful amount of attention; unfortunately Spring Bonnie, still deep in his mechanical comma, was unable to appreciate it. Something else was watching though. It studied the two men with a cold, calculating intelligence. It watched and waited. It listened to their chatter, imagining horrible things and wishing it could act upon twisted thoughts.

"It was one of the original mascots I think."

George frowned. "Didn't think there were any of them left."

Peter looked at his friend and the concern etched on his face.

"Why so glum? I thought you would be psyched? This is one hell of a find."

George gave a tired shrug of his shoulders. "I think they were expecting one of the newer ones, you know like Freddy or Foxy. They might not want this one."

"George, these guys went nuts when you brought them that broken old neon sign and rotting wiring. I am going to go out on a limb and say they're not going to be disappointed with this."

Peter's words didn't seem to be lifting his friend's spirits.

"If it's that old it's probably beyond saving."

Now it was Peter's turn to frown. The defeatist tone was so uncharacteristic of his friend. It was almost as if George wanted there to be something wrong with the old animatronic.

"You've spent months trying to hunt one of these things down. I'll get it working for you." He gave George a friendly slap on the shoulder.

"Don't think you'll be able to fix this one. They want to keep it authentic which means no new parts."

"What is wrong with you?" Peter asked with a chuckle, though the question was dead serious. "It's almost as if you don't want them to take this thing?"

Peter noticed the hesitation in his friend's eyes, the way he stiffened slightly at the accusation. George had a nasty habit of internalizing too much and Peter had a habit of been able to read even the most closed of people like a book, it was probably why the two of them had managed to remain friends for so long. Yes, Peter was sure there was something eating away at his friend.

"Seriously man, what's bothering you?"

George looked sideways at his friend, trying one last time to avoid the subject but Peter brushed the feeble gesture away with a stern glance of his own.

George sighed again. "I don't know." He looked at the lifeless animatronic which was staring at the ceiling with its perpetual grin, as if laughing at some universal joke that no one else could appreciate.

"There is something about that thing that I can't stand, something that sets me on edge."

He checked Peter's face, searching for any sign of amusement or indifference but his friend only listened intently.

"All those nightmarish stories that I've had to hear over the last couple of months about murder, evisceration, hauntings, and hidden corpses... I mean the stuff that went on behind closed doors in those bloody restaurants goes beyond the usual crap that I've come to expect from this world."

He turned to Pete whose expression was still solemn and intense. "I can't get those pictures of those poor kids out of my head either. And to know the last things they would have felt before they left this world were fear, pain and cruelty… It's just not right."

Peter gave a thoughtful nod. "It's chilling, no doubt. The damn franchise did go out of business though and the bastard that killed those kids got the chair. So there is some justice I suppose."

"Did he?" George cut in. "The guy they caught always claimed he was set up. After hearing some of the conspiracy theories about the company cover ups and allegations of deliberately misplaced evidence, I am beginning to think he may have been telling the truth."

"They all say they're innocent George. And even if the company did try to cover it all up they were only a pizza joint. These guys were hardly Rhodes scholars. You know what I mean."

George looked over at the animatronic again. That strange chill was trickling down his spine and his chest was growing tight. "Yeah I know. I feel like I am selling a bit of my soul though, helping these people put together a freak show based on all that tragedy."

Peter nodded. "It won't last long. The kind of person into that stuff tends to not only lack respect but an adult attention span too. Look at me, I've only been on this job for two days and I'm already board with it." He smiled but George didn't appreciate his self-deprecating humour. His expression remained dour. In fact the bags under his eyes seemed to have darkened and his shoulders sagged even more.

"You're putting too much of this on yourself again. Look, leave it with me, go home and get some rest. I'll call you when I am done."

George didn't want to tell Peter about the horrific nightmares and lucid dreams which plagued him ever since he had set foot in that dead restaurant. Still the thought of been able to take a day off with Becky gave him a sliver of relief. He nodded.

"Thanks man. You'll call if you need anything right?"

"Of course." Peter had his back to George and was already walking out to the back room to fetch some tools.

George made his way back through the glittering metal and the strange, indefinable instruments that hung from the walls like brutal Christmas decorations. Their sharp points and sledge hammer hardness catching his eye all too frequently.

 _Damn, not again._

He pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed his eyes shut as he reached for the door. That sense of trepidation and despair crawled down his back like a million little prickling spider legs.

 _Push past it, just push past it,_ he ordered himself. With a deep breath and a lunge he swept through the door and out into the warm and welcoming sun. Almost instantly the sensation disappeared like whispers in a storm.

He listened to his footsteps as he trudged over to his truck. He was going to be so glad when this contract ended. Something about this job had affected him like nothing before. George swallowed and pulled out his phone. He needed a distraction; he needed to pull his thoughts away from everything and anything to do with the damned Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

George slipped into the driver's seat, already starting to feel a bit better.

"Hi gorgeous."

The voice on the other end made him smile. "Can you take a long lunch today?"

"Yeah sure! What are you up for? Could go with some Thai myself."

George started the engine.

"I don't care, as long as it isn't pizza."

Peter heard the familiar rumble of George's truck as he drove off.

"So just you and me then," he said to the animatronic sprawled on the table before him.

It stared blankly back.

"Ok, let's see what we've got here."

Peter diligently looked over the rotting fur, which thankfully had started to stink a lot less after Josh and Jen had practically doused the thing in fabric cleaners and air fresheners. The fur was your standard nylon faux fur and wouldn't be hard to replace. He eyed up the amount he would need. He knew that its new owners didn't want any heavy modifications, but given the hideous appearance and unsettling smell Peter was sure that they wouldn't mind if he did a couple of touch ups here and there. They wanted something that would scare, not something that would repel. Or at least, that's how the compulsive perfectionist in him justified it.

He looked to the lower legs where the mould and water had done a considerable amount damage. The afternoon light gleamed off the polished scissors as he cut through the rubbery flesh and fur. What couldn't be cut unravelled and disintegrated under the gentle pressures of his hand.

"Yuck."

He brushed the flakes of crumbling latex and rubber from his hands.

With the inner workings of both legs exposed from the knee down Peter was able to finally get a good look at what lay within the mascot. He'd done his fair share of animatronic restorations, mainly old machines that had spent one too many years singing for theme park audiences, but this thing was something else. He pulled away some left over fur to study the yellowing, stained plastic that covered the metal endoskeleton.

"What the hell?"

The mechanics were unfamiliar, needlessly convoluted and complicated. Not only was there a standard plastic mould for the outer skin to sit on but a metal frame as well. The reinforced ribbing lay beneath the plastic in tight intervals. He searched for a screw or bolt that would loosen the frame and let him get a better look at the endoskeleton within but the antiquated technology wasn't giving up its secrets easily.

Peter bit back a huff and reached for his handsaw, not wanting to use any power tools on the brittle plastic. He cut away at the aged material, the filings falling to the floor with the other rotting debris. With a sharp crack the plastic split and fell apart like an egg shell revealing even more uncertainties and confusion. Peter frowned. Instead of a solid endoskeleton there was a puzzle of metal bound together iron-tight with cogs, gears and latches.

As he looked over the bizarre metal construct something caught his eye and sparked his interest. He dropped the saw next to the scissors and pulled out the flat head screw driver that had found a permanent home in his back pocket. He wedged it into one of the old cogs and threw down his considerable strength and weight. With a stressed metal groan the lower leg started to unfold. Brackets split apart and wires slid away into hidden housings as the endoskeleton neatly unfolded into the frame with all the smooth elegance of an opening flower. With an audible click it all settled into place and Peter was left admiring the ingenuity of the old engineering.

 _Now that is interesting._

With the endoskeleton folded away he could see the inner workings with a little more clarity. Something was clogged throughout the intricate machinery, strewn between cables and metal. He reached over and pulled the remaining fur and latex skin back a little more, searching the thigh, the arm and the chest. The thick crust was everywhere, almost as if the animatronic had been submerged head to toe in some thick, sludge like concoction.

He flicked on the light above the work table as the sun dipped out of sight leaving the stars and moon to shine dully. He picked up a hard bristle brush and a sharp dot punch from one of the boxes beneath the table and started to pick and clean away the grime and gristle from the inner workings.

As Peter worked something watched. It admired his efficiency, his dexterity and the tools he was using. The mechanic was oddly reminiscent of what it had been in life. It too had taken broken things apart and turned them into something better. The fleeting memories of its former existence brought the warmth of its rage and hate and they were so sweet and so comforting. It felt the soft caress of life as the mechanic leant down and tore away his old flesh. The almost forgotten saccharine taste of life made it bristle with equal parts frustration and hunger. It was odd how emotional and impulsive death had made it. Feelings and emotions which had been so carefully controlled or subdued in life now seemed to be all that was left, everything else that it had been was either lost or gone.

 _Oh well. Come what may,_ it thought.

It smiled at the mechanic.

Peter jabbed his screw driver at one of the old screws on the leg which looked loose. It turned once, twice before a soft click and the creaking twang of springs reached Peter's ears. He moved to get a better look at the insolent screw that had probably lost its thread, lowering his nose so that it sat a bare inch from the metal carcass. Suddenly the metal skeleton pulled together from every direction. He felt the quick brush of air as a piece grazed his face.

"Holy-!"

Peter jumped back to avoid losing his nose to the flying metal. With a bone jarring crash the components seized together again, locks snapping shut and brackets tightening with a vicious zeal and speed, creaking and settling back into their comfortably, closed position.

 _Fuck! Ok, important safety note; don't touch it when the system is open._

"Damn! Nearly took my face off!"

 _In fact let's just leave it closed._

He watched as the metal settled, the wires and cables stretching and sliding over each other as if alive. Peter felt an unease settle over him. The violent motions had seemingly reverberated through the whole mechanical body leaving servo's firing and limbs twitching in a disturbing mimicry of living spasms. He felt uncomfortably like a surgeon staring down at his patient built of chrome and plastic.

Peter cast his expert eye over the metal tied in metal, waiting for the electric quiver to fade away, spotting something buried in the chest cavity which made him stop. It poked out from the metal cage, obviously knocked loose by the brutal motions. He turned to his tool chest and pulled out a large pair of plyers. There was no way he was going to be putting his limbs anywhere inside this thing now. He grabbed the strange protrusion between the plyer's teeth. It was hard but softer and more flexible than the metal plates. He gave it a rough tug and tried to wiggle it free.

"Come on," he urged. With a grinding, crunching pop he yanked the obstruction out into the open light where he could see it better.

Peter stopped.

He was not really all that studied in biology or anatomy but Peter new a bone when he saw one. He held it up to the light and turned it over slowly at arm's length, his face pulling into a confused grimace. It was long slender and curved, just like a rib bone. As he studied the puzzle snapped together in his mind with the ferocity and suddenness of a steal trap. The double metal skeleton, the strange dark stains, his close call and the rib bone stuck in the chest all painted a grotesque portrait of horror.

Peter's hand trembled. He dropped the bone with a choked gasp, staring at it for a few seconds as his body raced to catch up with his mind. Still trembling he ran over to his desk, throwing papers and turning out draws. He found his phone buried under a box of screws. He grabbed it. His finger hovered over the buttons for a second. It was a second too long.

"Hey there Kids!"

Peter jumped like a startled cat, his phone slipping from his sweat covered hand to the ground with a loud crash.

"Welcome to Freddy's! My name is Spring Bonnie!"

Peter stared dumbfounded at the now standing and apparently fully functional animatronic. He hadn't even heard it move or seen it stand. It shouldn't have even been possible with its ancient power source almost certainly dried up and dead.

"How!?..."

It gestured and moved with an exaggeration typical of animatronics but there was something off about it, something Peter's trained eye picked up immediately. There was deliberateness to the exaggeration, a falseness that you could catch in the sudden smooth organic flick of a finger, or bow of the head.

The machine paused and for a moment the both of them stood staring at each other, the machine whirring slightly as Peter gawked wide eyed between heavy breaths.

The pause stretched on like a rubber band pulled taught, just waiting to be snapped by either one of them. But the room remained silent except for the beating of his heart.

The frightened man's perspiration mixed with the tangy smell of grease and lubricant. Islands of sweat formed under his arms and in his hands. There was something very wrong here, something unnatural and illusive. His mind kept screaming at him, itching to do something, to run or fight, but the other part was still lost in thought trying to pluck answers from nothing.

The pause stretched thin.

He couldn't put his finger on it, nor could he pull together a rational explanation. Even as hesitated he could see something changing in the machines eyes. There was a whitening of the pupils as if a slow creeping spill of liquid frost were running over the glass spheres. It was no trick of the light or his mind.

The strained tension quivered, at its limit, waiting to snap. Peter felt it. Starved of a rational answer and panicked he lunged forward and did the only sane thing he could think of. He grabbed the main cable that ran from the old power source in the gut and yanked the electrical artery free of its housing.

The old machine drooped forward dead with nothing more than a spluttered static protest. Peter let out the deep breath that he'd been holding and slumped himself. As he sagged forward, steadying his breaths the rabbit face slowly and silently lifted until it was level with his own. It smiled at him with a lipless, snarling smile that was as inane as it was terrifying.

Peter sensed the movement without even seeing it. A cold sweat seemed to explode all over his body as he felt himself rise to stare eye to eye with the horrible mug.

 _Oh God those eyes_.

They weren't toy eyes. They were filled with a living, raw malice. Peter felt his heart stop. He could hear George's words ringing in his ears. Fear, pain, death. He stared into the glass orbs and saw his own terrified face staring back. In a single pristine second all the tales, movies and discussions of death that had unconsciously remained abstract and detached became deeply, agonizingly personal. Death wasn't immaterial anymore, it wasn't something to be laughed or jeered at. It was here, staring at him through half lidded eyes, hungry to do him harm, salivating at the prospect of ending his life. Suddenly Peter really and truly understood death, and it terrified him.

He threw his weight back but a heavy mechanical paw struck out and seized him by the throat. He choked and coughed as a strength beyond human and even beyond machine started to slowly and tauntingly squeeze the life out of him.

Tools, screws and other bits fell to the floor in a cacophony of metal as his hands frantically lashed out searching for something he could use as a weapon. His fingers felt out something large and heavy and he grabbed it, striking out like a man possessed. He could feel himself swinging the heavy pipe, heard the air whistle as is whipped through the space, felt the thud as it collided with plastic and metal. But the grip around his throat didn't loosen. The corners of his vision started to blur and his shallow gasps started to scour his windpipe like sandpaper.

It watched Peter's increasingly desperate struggles with its perversely amused expression, its fingers tensing and releasing as if to affirm the deliberateness of the act and the living evil behind it.

Peter could feel his face swell and the hot of his slowing blood across his skin. The rushing ponding in his ears started to mute to a muffled rumble. His body and mind registered its failing struggle. It lamented the inevitable darkness with one last futile surge of adrenaline. He gave a jarring slap to the metal arm that held him aloft but it held firm, not even flinching at the attack.

The metal pipe slipped from his fingers as they fell limp. With each thump of his heart a little more of his life slipped away. Just as his body started to numb and his vison blurred to a final blinding white the vice grip suddenly released and he felt himself fall. His lungs screamed as he sucked in a gargantuan breath through his dry mouth, his body aching under the sudden strain.

As he lay on the table coughing and gulping the ominous click of metal feet on wood signalled the still lurking danger. He rolled over, his eyes trying to focus through salty tears and burst blood vessels. The world spun and rolled making it hard to find the threat. Through the pained prickle of nerves he was aware that he now rested on the very table the animatronic had been lying on.

The slow clink of metal moved around to his head. It was standing above him, its head tilted to the side.

Peter's heart sped up again, each beat agonizing, his empty veins and arteries filling again and bulging painfully. It had something in its hand and was eyeing the scissors and saw still on the table with a unsettling intensity. He looked in abject horror at the object clasped in its skeletal hand. It was the same dot punch he had used to clean out the dried gizzards earlier. Peter's eyes bulged as he looked up at the figure staring down at him, its eyes growing more alive, more human as the shadow of death drew near. Peter opened his mouth to plead with this thing which he knew was more than just machine, to try and stave of the horrors which he knew were coming but all that came out was a strangled, dry hiss.

Peter closed his eyes, he didn't want to see what it was going to do.

There was a pause as everything grew still; even the ticking of the clock on the wall went silent. There was a wave of pain that stretched on and on and on. Then a hollowness. A vacuum. Slowly the pain fell away and he plummeted into a dark nothingness which fell apart into another nothingness and then another and another…

* * *

Author's note: many thanks to all the readers and reviewers. I rather stupidly forgot to mention that my other FNAF story ties in with this one in so much as it gives the history of the FNAF3 guard which is going to become relevant soon. It's not necessary reading though, I am trying to make each story stand alone but if you're interested it's there. Thanks and hope you're still enjoying the story. The twisted events of FNAF3 are still to come, albeit told from a different and rather demented perspective. YAY!


	7. Light in the dark

Spring Bonnie frowned. Something wasn't right.

"Night guard?"

He looked at Fredbear in confusion, from the corners of his eyes he could see the bear's fingers twitching.

"It's me. Spring Bonnie," he pleaded, the notes of slight desperation making their way into his voice.

The big bear slowly leant forward as if trying to find his old partner in the young man that stood before him. Bonnie wanted to reach out and grab the bear's face, to pull him close and make him see the machine within the man but held back, biting his bottom lip and balling his fists instead. The power and ferocity of the impulse scared him. That it had come from within him just made it all the more unsettling. He rolled the desperation up and buried it away.

"It's me Fredbear! Really it is."

The bear stared a hollow stare but allowed Bonnie to continue.

"They put me away one night and never came back. I was waiting Fredbear, waiting for so long but no one came to get me. There were some strange children and a smiling man…but I am not sure that even really happened, something was wrong that night. I think that must have been when I started to breakdown."

Bonnie looked to Fredbear for reassurance, to see if his story had awoken some recognition, but the big bear just stood emotionless, his eyes blank.

Bonnie wrapped his arms around his chest as another unpleasant sensation started to seize him. His heart started to pump faster and his breaths grew shallow. Even when he was with an old friend he was still alone.

"When I woke I wasn't in the room anymore," he continued more for himself than his audience, "I was back at the old dinner but outside. I tried to go home but…" He trailed off. He still wasn't sure what had happened out there either.

"Something horrible happened and I tried to fix it but found myself here instead. I don't even know where we are Fredbear."

"How could you not know?"

The bear's bluntness made him pause. He opened his mouth to answer but thought of the all the words and memories he kept finding within himself. There was such a certain familiarity about them. But why then did a part of him still feel so alienated and confused by this sudden knowledge? Bonnie stroked his hands over his soft blond hair. The action was oddly comforting.

"I feel like I should know this place but-" he looked at Fred and the wall of drawings, "how can these places be in my head that I have never been too? Like the outside world" He gestured at the vague direction of the door and the walls around him.

"And look at this." He pointed to the various scribbled drawings on the wall.

"Who is this purple rabbit? Who are they and why aren't we here?" His pointing finger danced franticly across the wall as his mind tumbled in and over itself with questions.

Freadbear cocked his head to the side considering some deep thought.

"But you have been to those places and you've worked here for a long time." Freadbear spoke with such a dry frankness that Bonnie backed away from him a little, the words another painful wedge between the once partners.

"You're the night guard," the bear insisted

Bonnie shook his head feebly. "No."

The big golden bear stared at him blankly before waddling over to the wall covered with drawings, the soft pat of his feet the only sound in the silence. Bonnie watched. The big bear muzzle leaned in and hung an inch from the wall as he studied the pictures.

"This is Freddy and his gang, Foxy, Chica, Bonnie and me, Fre-Golden Freddy."

"I am Bonnie," he slapped his chest a bit rougher than he meant to, "and you're Fredbear!"

Fredbear didn't even turn to acknowledge the outburst. "Bonnie and I were Spring Bonnie and Fredbear's replacements, more advanced, better than the old ones."

Bonnie suddenly felt as if something icy and sharp had plunged into his chest. The room floated around him in an effluvium of hysteria.

"The old ones were the first to go bad. They and all those like them were discarded, left to rot somewhere where they could do no harm."

"G-go bad?" Bonnie's legs suddenly felt like they had vanished and the air around him felt like a suffocating blanket. "Left to rot…" He thought of all that time spent alone and lost in that little room and of the little girl with the red bow. Had he done something wrong all those years ago? Is that why had he been left in this nightmare world?

Fredbear continued mercilessly. "Then the others started to go bad too. But they were different."

He turned back to Bonnie and jabbed an accusing claw at him. "You were brought in to watch over Freddy Fazbear's. You protect it from the bad animatronics."

Spring Bonnie could feel his head shake in disagreement but even as he did a treacherous part of him started to find truths in the big gold bear's words. The walls around him started to feel acutely familiar as memories started to flit across his mind's eye like leaves on the wind. He remembered the sound of his shoes slapping against the floor as he walked his rounds down the main hall of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria; the strong smell of old pizza and the sweetness of sugar hanging in the air as he made his way past the party rooms.

"No." Bonnie spat the word out as he pushed away the memory. He didn't want to be a part of this place, not at all. He wanted to be back in his own little world, singing for the smiling children again like he had been all those years ago. He seized that memory with a grim determination. He wasn't going to let this malfunction steal his very mind from him.

Freadbear leant forward and glared at Bonnie. "You have always been a part of this place and you will **always** **be** a part of this place night guard."

Bonnie looked up at his old friend with horror in his eyes, his jaw hanging agape. A deep pain bloomed in him as something wet leaked from his eyes ran down his cheek.

 _Tears,_ the insolent memories pointedly informed him.

Bonnie shuddered as the world around him started to spin, his hysteria bubbling over as his old friend looked on without an inch of sympathy or warmth. Bonnie's eyes stung as more tears pooled under his eyelids, the pounding in his chest drowning out all other sounds as the salty drops fell from his chin. There was nothing for him to hold onto any more. His old partner didn't recognize him. He couldn't trust the old bear or even himself. His chest rose and sunk even faster as something inside him shattered into a million pieces.

Suddenly the space around him seemed too small. He needed to get out. He needed to escape.

Bonnie spun around, slamming past the golden bear as he let his legs carry him down the hall, his treacherous memories guiding him through the building with expert precision.

"Night guard don't! It's not safe!"

The old mascot's cries fell on deaf ears.

His new body was fast, very fast. The world around him became a blur of colour and shape as he raced along the halls. Bonnie liked it. Perhaps he could just run forever and not stop.

 _I am not the night guard. I have not and would not ever go bad. This is a bad dream, part of a malfunction and I will find a way to fix it._

He reached the door to the outside world and threw it open, only to find himself in a new carpark. He slid to a stop. The sun had disappeared and the outside world had grown dark. A pair of street lights illuminated the parking lot with a feeble glow but their light was stretched thin and beyond the edge of the restaurants boundaries the dark was unnatural and all consuming.

Bonnie stood panting, too fixated on the world around him to appreciate the novel sensations his body was throwing at him. He looked over his shoulder at the building he had fled from, the Freddy Fazbear logo aglow with a distinctly artificial light and its mascots smiling mug looking as fake as the plastic he was made from.

Bonnie turned back to the dark and took a few hesitant steps forward, his new-old memories subconsciously tugging his hand toward his belt. He looked down at the big metal flashlight that hung against his thigh. The cold, heavy metal reminded him of his old self and so tentatively he unstrapped it from his waist and took it in his hand. It felt heavy and familiar, like an old friend both of his halves appreciated. Calm settled over him as he held it before him like a shield. He flicked the switch and instantly a beam of bright light was thrown out across the parking lot. The light shone much brighter than the dull street lamps, almost as if it were taken from the sun itself.

The beam shivered as his hand trembled. He levelled it at the dark beyond the boundaries of the restaurant hoping that there was something buried in it, something that could help him find his way home, but even the bright of the flashlight just disappeared hopelessly into the nothing. His hand clenched into a fist as the irritating gnaw of frustration and fear returned. He had only been feeling the world for a short time now and yet those unpleasant emotions were already like old companions.

A loud crunch made him look to his feet. He lifted his black shoe to see a small white pebble. It looked so weird and out of place. Still riding his frustration he picked up the pebble and threw it into the dark with all of his strength. There was no sound of it striking the ground or anything else for that matter, it simply vanished into the hungry dark, lost forever. He felt an instant pang of guilt and regret.

Bonnie closed his eyes. It had been stupid to flee from his old friend. There was nowhere to run to. The old bear had told him as much.

A sudden rustling sound caught his attention.

He turned and pointed with his flashlight at the direction of the sound.

"Hello? Fredbear?"

He listened. There was defiantly someone else out here with him. His spirits lifted a little.

The rustling grew louder.

Bonnie followed the sound, rounding the restaurant and coming to a fenced off area where the bins were stored. A white sign hung on the gate, the words 'employees only' scribbled in a loose cursive. He looked down at his uniform, Fazbear's signature black and purple colours suggesting his right of passage.

The gate squealed open.

"Hello?"

He peered around the corner; letting his flashlight guide the way as it revealed the cramped space filled with bins and trash.

The sight that greeted him made his heart stop.

It unfolded from between the two dumpsters, stretching up and up as it stood to its full, monstrous height. It twitched and arched a full meter taller than him, its skeletal body cracking and popping as it stretched itself out.

Bonnie levelled his torch at the thing and immediately froze still, his stomach dropping as the horrid, mangled creature slunk into his light.

Corse, dirty, red fur covered its top half and parts of its thin dog like legs, opening up around the stomach and girth to reveal a skeleton, smooth and organic in its lines but gleaming with a metallic sheen. Beneath the fur, flesh and wire were fused seamlessly with muscle and sinew, which in turn covered organs of part machine, part living tissue. Its silhouette was gaunt and skeletal.

The grotesque sight held Bonnie's terrified gaze as he took a couple of slow, measured steps back. The thing looked toward the sudden movement, elegantly swivelling its top half to face him. Its flesh quivered and pulsed as it brought its toothy muzzle forward. A long tongue uncoiled from between two rows of metal and bone teeth, hydraulic fluids and saliva dripping from its ferociously large canines. The thing slid over the bins and around Spring Bonnie's light with a smooth cat like grace. Two eyes glared at him from above the vulpine snout. One glowing red camera eye peered at him from beneath a flipped up eyepatch and a very wet, human eye narrowed menacingly, oozing oily tears down the furry cheek.

Bonnie gave a startled yelp as the horrible thing prowled closer to him. Even the know all part of him could give nothing to define it, nothing to protect himself. Monster, abomination; even words like those dissolved into a hopelessly inadequate jumble of syllables in the face of the creeping terror.

As it prowled closer its snout rolled up and its teeth barred in a frightening snarl. The living eye and the mechanical eye grew dark as they scrutinized his face, his uniform and his badge.

Bonnie had never known malice, never known fear, nor dread, nor danger before this strange nightmare, but the other part of him had and it slammed its brutal awareness across him like a sledge hammer to the face.

 _It's going to kill me_.

Death in all of its infinite totality bore down on him in that infinitesimal moment. The Ending of everything he had known, everything he had been and everything he would be, see, hear or feel was standing before him.

Desperate Bonnie wielded the only weapon he had. The flashlight's beam caught the creature straight in the face and it let out a violent hiss, like steam gushing from metal pipes. It reared back and swiped at the air with its hooked hand, the sharp blade whistling as it cut through the air.

Bonnie blinked both surprised and relieved that it had worked. He grabbed the flashlight with both his hands and pointed it at the hunched thing, making sure to catch it in the eyes with the full force of his light.

The mechanical monster's fur bristled as a strange shudder convulsed down its body. It crawled out from between the bins and Bonnie gasped.

He recognised the deformed creature from the childish drawings he had seen hanging in the restaurant not moments ago. _Foxy._ That was what Fredbear had called it. But the twisted thing was far removed from the cartoonish mascot it had once been.

This was what his old friend must have been talking about. This hideous thing must be one of the bad animatronics.

Bonnie's mind raced. How was he supposed to protect Freddy Fazbear's from this thing? He could feel the malice dripping from its body, the sharp claws and hook hand glistening with deadly intent. It wanted to break him in a terrible way, and it would if he were stupid enough to get within reach of its eager hands.

Its drool dripped onto the cement floor with loud splats as it tried to focus in on its pray.

Bonnie stepped back out into the car park, his foot crunching some more loose gravel. The sound triggered his memory which graciously tossed the answer at him.

 _The darkness._

If he could force the creature into that unnatural shroud perhaps it would be consumed like the pebble.

Bonnie pointed the light at the creature with renewed determination. He took a couple of delicate steps forward pointing with laser like precision. The Foxy monster shuddered and lunged back, hissing and snarling. Emboldened Bonnie stamped forward and pushed the creature toward the dark.

The two of them locked in a deadly dance across the empty space, one crawling closer and closer to the waiting dark. The Foxy monster tried to weave out of the light, tossing itself around like a thrashing snake but Bonnie kept it pinned in the beam of light.

Sure enough as the Foxy thing scuttled past the soft halo of the street light it hesitated, its tail tucking in between its legs and its long torso arching up like a scared cat. It swung its head over its shoulder to glance at the obsidian wall behind it, the black tears from the wet eye flowing faster and thicker.

Fear, hate and confusion flowed between the monster and the man like a wild current of electricity. The pure terror in the monster's organic eye was too familiar to Bonnie. The flashlight lowered slightly, leaving the angry red machine eye to find its target again, narrowing with its own sinister intent.

To late Bonnie realized the predicament he'd stumbled into. The creature was trapped between him and the terrifying unknown, and he was the lesser evil. The monster charged, its metal claws shredding gravel and stone, its body uncoiling and its giant maw opening to reveal the rows of razor teeth.

Bonnie instinctively fell to his knees and closed his eyes. The creature's tortured scream twisted the air around him as he waited for the crushing bite.

It never came.

He listened to the sound of his heart and heavy breathing. Slowly he opened his eyes just as the wall of black slowly rolled away from where it had devoured the monster. The endless surface undulating like a canvas stretched over a tossing sea.

Bonnie's chest heaved as he blinked slowly. Suddenly the cold interior of the restaurant didn't seem so bad after all. He picked himself up and grabbed his torch from the ground. He'd have to tell Fredbear what had happened. He needed answers and his old friend seemed to be the only one able to provide them.

As he turned a metal claw lashed out from the dark and sized his ankle with a crushing grip.

Bonnie screamed as skin and muscle tore and burst under the vice hold of the metal fingers. With one swift violent movement he was ripped off his feet and dragged into the dark still shrieking in pain. There was no time to prepare himself for the plunge. The black curtain raced up to meet him.

 _In the void everything changed. There was no sound, no pain nothing, except for a strange sense of anticipation. His body was gone, everything was gone, there was only feeling._

 _A red smudge of light danced through the dark and he felt a sudden pressing need to follow it. It stretched and distorted like a crudely animated scribble. He followed it, patient, watching as it darted through the shifting maze of dark. He knew it would stop, and it did. Curling up in itself it tired to burrow into the shadow. A tingle of excitement ran through him, a feeling like the hum of electricity. He moved through the void around behind the dot and stood over it. It twitched and stretched almost as if it were looking for something. He watched._

 _The dot tried to push itself further into the dark, squirming about until it shifted in his direction. It grew still for a second as if trying to blend in with its surroundings or perhaps froze, waiting for something. He watched._

 _The red blot started to blur, its lines becoming jagged as it suddenly burst from within in a flurry of heaving motions. It tried to dart from the shadows but he gently moved to block the way. It retreated back to its spot still shuddering. He moved a little closer, curious and coursing with a hungry energy that wanted to escape him._

 _The dot stretched and contorted beneath him as he watched. The excitement and sizzling energy building like a tidal wave. It pushed him forward and he felt himself reaching out for the little ball of energy. He opened it up with one swift move. The red exploded through the dark and he felt contentment and relief crash down on him._

The pain returned.

Bonnie felt a strong but gentle hand around his arm. He opened his eyes and choked down a deep breath. Slowly the dark turned to a blur of light that, in turn, was slowly pulled into focus by his tired eyes.

"I told you it was dangerous night guard."

Bonnie rolled over only barely hearing Fredbear. He felt dirty. He was clean, but he felt dirty. It clung to him, invisible but there none the less. It was in his hair, streaked across his skin and under his nails. He could taste it in his mouth and feel it in his throat.

It made him sick.

"Night guard?"

Bonnie was trembling all over, his hands shaking uncontrollably. It was too much. He felt heavy like something was pulling him inward, forcing him to implode.

 _Hell._

The word found its way into his head.

 _I am in hell._

A reassuring paw was placed on his shoulder. The gesture was so unexpected, so filled with a kindness he had never felt that he stoped and looked up at the old mascot.

"I am sorry. This is my fault night guard. I shouldn't have said those things I said. We can fix this."

He nodded in the direction of a large figure lying sprawled on the ground.

Bonnie looked over his shoulder and shuddered, pressing up against the big bear for reassurance. Behind him the Foxy creature had obviously fallen from the darkness too. The wet eye was closed and the robot eye, though still staring at him and Freadbear, seemed dull. It twitched every so often as if trying to use its broken limbs, or perhaps just loosing the last sparks of life to its dead body.

Bonnie frowned. As he watched its mouth open and close aimlessly he started to feel an unpleasant affinity with the broken thing. He couldn't explain it or really even understand it. Perhaps it was just its brokenness. He wondered if it was as lost in its own nightmare world as he was in his.

"What about him?"

The gold bear considered the question; something changing in his eyes as he did so. "I can fix him."

Bonnie nodded. For the first time in a long time he felt relief, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. If they could fix Foxy maybe there was hope for him. Perhaps Fredbear was right. Perhaps it was indeed his purpose to protect Freddy Fazbear's and once that was done maybe things would go back to the way they were before.

He smiled up at his old companion. He called himself Golden Freddy but Bonnie wasn't convinced. It was Fredbear. Only his old friend could make him this happy. He felt the bears soft fur against his face as he leant against him. It was magic. He stopped trembling, a calm settling over him.

"Come back inside," the bear ordered and Bonnie obeyed, standing up on his tired legs, hating the unpleasant pain that pulsed from his swollen ankle. He followed Fredbear back.

The Foxy wraith dragged along behind Fredbear as they walked into the restaurant, the golden bear holding a firm grip on its leg as it occasionally thrashed and kicked. Bonnie didn't notice the way the mangled machine looked at Fredbear nor did he notice the darkness contract a little closer to the restaurant as they stepped inside. He was holding on to the solace his friend had brought him. It was comforting.

* * *

I apologise to the readers for the big break between chapters. Been a bit a of hectic couple of months. I will try to have more reasonable updates. :) So yeah, read and review and I hope you enjoy.


	8. future echoes

"Woah dude he looks amazing!"

George watched his eccentric employer dance around the old animatronic.

"I can't believe your friend managed to get the old guy working again."

"Yeah, me either," George muttered nervously. He turned to Josh who was standing beside him. "You sure Pete didn't leave a message or anything?"

Josh shook his head. "Last I spoke to him he just gave me the date to come pick up the mascot and that was on – Monday. I think."

George didn't like it. There was something wrong. He could feel it, a tense uncertainty that followed him like a shadow.

"It's not like him not to call me."

Josh shrugged. "There wasn't anyone in when I picked the old guy up, but lets be honest George he has taken impromptu holidays with out warning us before. I couldn't get through to Mindy either so odds are they're probably camping out at hers or something like that."

George made a mental note to call Mindy himself after they were done here. There was something all to strange about this.

"So your payment will be transferred into your account tomorrow. If that's cool with you?"

Nathan Burrows, the somewhat odd spokesman for the bizarre venture that was Fazbear Fright, darted around the old mascot like an excited kid. As he poked and prodded George had to resist the urge to pull him away from the rotting machine.

"Tomorrow will be fine."

"Excellent. I still can't believe this," he beamed, practically giddy. "He looks amazing, like so totally perfect. You think it's going to scare the kids?"

"I think it will scare the adults," George deadpanned.

"How do you switch him on?"

Before George could protest Josh leant forward and stabbed something buried at the back of the animatronic rabbit's neck. The old machine shuddered.

Spring Bonnie was alone again waiting at the security desk just as Fredbear had instructed him. He rubbed at the tender flesh around his ankle. His old friend had promised to fix the wounds from his earlier confrontation as he'd wandered off with Foxy. Bonnie winced. He'd decided that he really, really didn't enjoy pain. It was a cruel and bizarre way to express damage and discourage behaviours. His old body managed to do both with out such unpleasantness. He prodded at his bruised lower leg, gasping and hissing every time his touch was to rough.

It was just so… _sadistic_.

He sighed, enjoying the relief the action brought him. Thoughts of his old body and life relaxed him slightly. He rolled his sock back up, sunk deep into the chair and let his foot slide back to the floor. Fatigue was starting to weigh down his eyelids and loosen muscles. The sensation wasn't unpleasant but he felt the need to fight it anyway. He promised Fredbear he would guard the hall and he wasn't about to let his friend down. Bonnie pressed his lips together and began to hum, hoping the act could keep him awake. He rocked himself softly in the chair as the notes effortlessly found their way to his lips. There was a fluttering in his chest as memories turned to melodies and the notes drifted from the back of his throat. It felt like an age since he had sung Frebear party song.

A pleasant warmth spilled across him like water across a floor. Light danced a cross his eyelids. He forced his tired eyes open and blinked slowly. Two of the screens on the desk had switched on and had formed a joint panoramic view of a dark room. Bonnie blinked again. Three men stared back at him from the screens. They hemmed in over the cameras like drooping, wind battered trees.

Bonnie frowned as pins and needles prickled across his hands and feet. His face grew numb and his body felt light. He could see the figures mouths move but there was no sound. He leaned forward so that his nose was almost touching the screen. Static electricity spat and snapped against his skin.

"Fredbear?" The call was feeble and barley made it past his own tongue let alone the long corridor.

Bonnie slumped his energy seeping from him like water down the drain. The screens filled his blurring vision, their static hiss filling his ears until it became a deafening roar that engulfed him. He almost succumbed to the sweet allure of this new species of sleep but something on the screens caught his attention and forced him awake. Framing the bottom of the image was a very familiar rabbit snout.

 _Those are my eyes!_

Bonnie gasped. Somehow he was seeing through his old eyes. The muted colours and short-sightedness were distinctive flaws that he remembered all so well. He reached forward longingly and touched the screen.

George felt himself stiffen as the machine twitched slightly, the tip of its ear flicking. Slowly it lurched to life and straightened. The stubby rabbit muzzle swung from side to side as it searched its surroundings.

George's face creased into a puzzled frown. There was something different about his mechanical friend. The eerie, cold malevolence had disappeared and the dull plastic eyes were back. It looked almost helpless, stuttering and juddering awkwardly as the old gears groaned to life.

"This is so awesome!"

George pinched Nathan's shirt between his fingers and tugged the over enthusiastic man back, keeping a healthy distance between the disorientated animatronic and their more fragile bodies. He remembered the dents in the heavy metal doors back at the old restaurant and shuddered. This was a bad idea.

The machine blinked in rapid succession, almost as if awaking from a deep sleep. It looked at each of the men in turn, registering their faces.

Bonnie felt dizzy. The whole world seemed to be spinning around him in a violent tornado of colour and sound. He panicked as he felt his body numb, all the wonderful organic sensations dying down to a familiar dull electric awareness. Bonnie immediately recognised the feeling. He pulled his had away from the screen but the sensation remained. He turned his head and the image on the screen turned with him. He looked at the faces before him. They stared back.

He blinked and took in the world behind the screens, twisting the head on his old body from side to side. It was dark and filled with a mishmash of props and décor that had become synonymous with the Fazbear world. Unlike the dream world he resided in though the more sinister qualities felt contrived and artificial. There was no real malice in this other place, just a crudely staged appropriation. An empty Foxy mask stared at Bonnie from the corner. It looked pathetic and hollow, just like its surroundings.

"Hey, bunny!"

Nathan waved a hand in Spring Bonnie's face drawing his attention back to the room's occupants.

"Don't do that!" George caught his hand. "Seriously, you have heard what these things can do right?"

Nathan looked sheepishly at George. "Yeah, I've heard a bit. "

George gave the young man an incredulous look. "One of these things removed half a kids head. Another left some poor employee in hospital minus two arms, half a face, half a leg and his employers considered him lucky. They're dangerous."

The words sunk into Bonnie like poison as he stared fixated at the screens.

"Relax dude. This guy is so old he can barely stand up let alone go all terminator on us."

"He's right George. Watch this."

Bonnie watched as the man with bronze hair walked up to his old body and gave the shoulder a half-hearted shove. The animatronic rocked on its legs like a metronome pendulum before toppling over sideways and smashing into an old party table.

Bonnie felt the air rush around him even though he was still, his pains mirroring the numerous strikes his old body took as it fell to the ground. He winced.

"Hey, hey! Easy with the merchandise dude or it's coming out of your pay."

"Oops. Shit, sorry."

The two men rushed forward to help right the animatronic that was flailing helplessly on its back. Their hands wrapped around its arms and Bonnie felt their touch – it was alive and unmistakably real. A desperate mewl escaped his lips. He wasn't alone anymore; he'd been remembered and brought back. He was really here and they were really there. Bonnie pushed his hands back up against the screens as if to try and sink through, but they remained cold and sturdy against his palms.

He poured all of his thoughts into moving his old body but it worked against him. He could feel the shadow of his old body around him, his servos locking and every movement slow and laboured. The speakers filled with the sound of metal grinding against metal with loud painful snaps and groans. Bonnie bit back a huff of frustration.

"Hey Timmy come look at this!"

At the sound of his name a round little face peaked from behind the doorframe. The boy looked up at George and Josh with a cheeky smile. He had his father's sharp features and his eyes were filled with the same bright, lust for life as his mother.

Josh beckoned to his son with a grand wave of his arm. "Come see the old guy in action."

Timothy looked at his father and then at the gold rabbit standing between them. His pale green eyes grew intense and his grin faded as he tiptoed around the door and into the room. The little boy padded over to his dad, sliding up behind Josh to peer around his leg at the juddering machine.

Bonnie felt euphoria erupt within him as the boy's eyes stared through the screen to meet his with an equal mix of fear and curiosity.

Timmy's hand gripped at his father's pants for reassurance. Bonnie noticed and willed his other self to back up, lowing his head and gaze a little more. It wasn't the first time he had been regarded with fear. Bonnie understood, he was big and they were always so small. He tried to offer words of comfort but all that came out of his old vocal processor was a dry static cough. He tried again but it could barely manage a squeak.

A melodic, soft chuckle filled Bonnie's ears. It was a warm comfort melting away his cold horrors, trials and loneliness. The beautiful sound echoed through and around him. His old body twitched violently.

The room's occupants backed further away and Tim stopped giggling.

"It's amazing isn't it?" Josh turned and looked at his friend who was regarding the animatronic with guarded suspicion.

"Yeah," George said flatly

"Why is he broken daddy?"

Josh put a hand on his son's head. "He's just old."

Bonnie watched as the screens focused on the young boy, his optic sensors narrowing in on Timmy.

"I thought uncle Pete was going to fix him to make him not old and scary."

"No way!" Nathan cut in, "we want this guy to be scary."

Tim, drawn by his childish wonderment and curiosity had quietly shuffled closer to the hunched animatronic. His green eyes darted over the old machine with a mix of fascination, trepidation and pity.

Bonnie wanted to explain to the little boy that there was nothing to be scared of, that he was a friend but his desires didn't carry across into the other place. Mechanical eyes scanned the adults with an uncharacteristic, deep scrutiny. His newfound memories and awareness opening up a world that he'd been blind too. He could understand their words now and read their lives in the way they moved, dressed and spoke. It was exciting but they were only periphery interests. He turned back to Tim and trembled, griped with a budding anticipation.

George looked at Josh and Nathan. Had they noticed the way it seemed to be following their conversations? He was no tech expert but its actions looked as if they were driven by more than just basic audio tracking programs.

"Don't get too close Tim," George warned, "he's big and strong. A knock from him could do some serious damage."

Josh reached forward and gently pulled Tim back.

The mascot turned to George and stared at him. The wide-eyed innocence was still there but the intensity of the glare was unsettling. George clenched his hands in his pockets to try and hide his discomfort.

"You guys think maybe we should turn him off? I don't know how much power this thing has left and until we can reach Pete it's probably best if we leave him off."

As soon as the words left his mouth the phone in his pocket rang making everyone in the room jump with its sudden loudness.

George pulled it out noticing how tacky with sweat his hands were. A picture of Peter's smiling face filled the phone screen. George blinked. It was an eerie coincidence but with this job odd happenings and unusual events seemed to be par for the cause. He swiped the answer call symbol.

"Pete?"

The line crackled with static but laced in between the hiss and pops George could make out a distant, stretched voice. He glanced sideways at the animatronic. It was still staring at him.

"Pete? Is that you? The line is really bad you're going to have to speak up!"

Josh jabbed his finger at the door indicating they should go outside where the reception might be better.

"G-e-o-r-g…so sorry…help."

"Hang on Pete I'm just going outside for a better signal."

George ran out of the room with Josh following behind.

"Hey Nate, could you watch Tim? I need to have a word with Pete"

"Yeah, sure dude."

Josh nodded at Nathan and Tim as he followed George out of the room.

Nathan turned to Tim.

"So, you think he is scary enough?" He nodded at the still crouched mascot.

Both Tim and Nathan turned to the animatronic whose pose had become less rigid and more human. His hands rested on the tops of his bent knees and his head had rolled forward a fraction.

Tim nodded slowly. "But he looks sad. Why don't you fix him?"

"Well, I, um…" Nathan floundered around with his words. He wasn't good with kids and he knew Josh would probably beat the hell out of him if he started to explain the finer, gruesome details of the Fazbear chians sordid history.

"You wanna see some of the other cool stuff we found?"

Tim shrugged and nodded.

Nathan sighed, pleased he'd managed to doge that bullet.

They turned and started to walk from the room but the patter of soft feet suggested they wouldn't be doing it alone.

As the boy walked off, his back to Bonnie, the machine now security guard felt a familiar itch shudder across his skin. Without warning his old body heaved itself upright in one fluid movement. It was odd that there was no sound of servos or hum of electricity, just the soft creak of old joints and gentle scrape of metal on metal.

The animatronic padded forward, soft and silent, its eyes not leaving the little boy who had started to fall further behind the man. Bonnie watched the screens intently as the machine followed them down the hall. He wasn't listening to Nathan wittering on about his morbid treasure trove, not noticing the scribbled drawings of him on the wall or the original Fredbear poster; he was focused on only one thing.

Timmy stopped to look at a little toy figure of Chica.

A mechanical hand reached forward its fingers slipping with ghostly delicacy between the spiked tuffs on the little head. Bonnie felt the tingle of fine hairs between his fingers. His hand twitched. The small skull fit so neatly in the huge paw. It was so perfect, a gift wrapped by fate itself just waiting to be torn open. The metal digits started to curl as if to grab a fist full of the soft hair.

 _No! What am I doing?!_

Bonnie exerted all of his horrified energy into holding the arm still. It quivered as if pulled between two opposing forces. He shuddered as he became acutely aware of the ravenous longing bubbling within him with each beat of his heart. He tried to will his old body away from the boy who was still lost in the exploration of this strange place. Painful seconds stretched by as its hand hovered threateningly above the boy's head like a poised talon.

Perspiration started to bead on Bonnie's forehead and his limbs quivered with fatigue. He dug deeper and found a hidden strength. He drove himself into the memories of his old body, remembering every inch and detail, feeling the old metal and plastic. It worked. The hand pulled away.

The movement released Timmy from the spell that captivated his attentions. He turned and gasped, stumbling back from the animatronic who was looming above him even in its crouched stance.

The look of horror on Tim's face was a blade that cut deep into Bonnie. He bit back the pain and pushed what little energy he had into forcing control upon his errant body. The hand clenched and flexed in front of the boys face before very tenderly moving to pat him on the shoulder.

Tim regarded the gesture with surprise before turning back to the mascot.

The animatronic snapped its hand away and pulled it up into a stiff wave.

Bonnie calmed himself. He focused all the energy he had left into a concentrated ball, collecting the small sun of power so that it began overheating his old body. He could feel the rising heat burn through his circuits; he could feel himself falling back into the darkness of his dream world as the last lick of energy sapped from his old battery and wound its way through him.

Timmy returned the gesture with his own half wave but it was lost on the blank eyes and slumped body that collapsed unceremoniously to the ground.

The screens went dark again and Bonnie fell back into his chair, his chest heaving with sharp, shallow breaths.

"Woah!"

Tim looked over his shoulder at a stunned Nathan.

"How did he get there?"

"Walked."

"Walked? It couldn't even stand in the other room."

Tim shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to be left alone but he's run out of power now just like George said he would."

Nathan looked over the inanimate machine with an expression of disbelief, his mouth suddenly pulling into a toothy grin. "How awesome would it be if it really was haunted."

Fredbear casually meandered back to the security room, his task now taken care of. He paused. The man who sat slumped behind the security desk didn't look like that man he had left only minutes ago. His blond hair was dishevelled, some of the long locks stuck flat against his wet forehead. His eyes were wide and wet and his purple shirt was stained dark with sweat.

"Night guard?"

He didn't respond, just stared transfixed at the static filled screens in front of him, his chest heaving.

The big bear mascot waddled around the desk to stand behind the frozen man and put a comforting paw on his shoulder.

Bonnie jumped at the sudden contact, truly unaware of the other animatronics presence.

"Did you come across another bad animatronic?" Fredbear asked with more than a touch of sympathy in his voice.

Bonnie looked up at the bear that was quite a bit taller than his sitting self. He could barley stand as he turned to his old friend and when he spoke his voice was a whisper and he retched as if he'd taken poison.

The paw around his shoulder tightened.

"They were afraid of me. They called me dangerous." He retched again.

"Who? Who called you dangerous? You keep Freddy Fazbear's safe."

A shaking hand reached up and pushed the big paw off his shoulder, wrapping his hand around the plastic bear claws instead and holding them tight. When he looked up at the bear mascot the young man was changed. There was a wild determination in his eyes.

"I-I was going to..." Bonnie swallowed, the action causing him a huge amount of discomfort. "You said the old animatronics went bad."

Fredbear shook his head. "It's not supposed to be talked about."

The grip around his paw tightened. "You have to tell me everything Fredbear. Everything. Please."

The bear looked down at the security guard and knew he would tell him.


	9. The New Haunt

_I can feel you now. I know where you are. I know how you get in and I know how to keep you out_. It - he smiled inwardly _. And now I know_ _ **what**_ _you are._

Springtrap lay on the floor where he had fallen, staring at his reflection in a broken mirror. His twisted scheme had panned out as planned. He had everything he needed and yet he found himself wanting. Not because he'd been denied his pleasures - there would always be other children - but because his better half had surprised him. The way they bled into each other had been far to fluid, too natural, like pieces of a puzzle fitting neatly together. He'd found things in that bond too. Feelings he'd lost in death and even in life had slipped through their connection like a poisoned intravenous drip. That other mind that had at first seemed so alien was now uncomfortably familiar. Springtrap curled his fingers as he stared at his rotting mechanical body. Apparently they had each stolen something from each other that night. That intrigued and amused him, sentiments which didn't bode well for his new 'partner'.

"You're not going to believe this. It followed us down the hall and collapsed here."

The click of shoes surrounded him.

"What?"

"Yeah, no joke dude. I just came down here, with the kid turned around and there he was."

A silence settled over the men as they let that sink in.

"Well, whatever happened it looks like it has no power now and without Peter I wouldn't have a clue how to get it running again either."

"Didn't, didn't you just speak with him?"

"No. The line was really bad, really weird, and when I called him back no one answered."

"Oh. Damn."

Silver eyes watched the men through the mirror. He read their personalities and body language, exposed their flaws and insecurities. It was a habit that even death couldn't part from him.

"He looks scary when he isn't working."

The silver eyes moved imperceptibly to stare at the reflection of the young face.

"Do you want us to move it back to the other room then?"

"Nah. We're supposed to be out of here anyway, bosses don't wanna have to shell out on the over time either."

"God forbid."

"Ha! I know dude. Our stand in security guard is going to be here soon any way."

Spring trap could feel George's eyes look him over. He could sense the muscle tight fear barley concealed beneath the thin shield of age and wisdom. It was captivating to watch the primal emotion strip him bare, leaving nothing more than a wide-eyed child in a man's flesh.

He forced his toxic influence into the tiles beneath him, just as he had done in the old restaurant. It seeped out like invisible oil.

"So um, Josh, dude, you think you could come in tomorrow and fix up the rest of that roof. It's still leaking."

Twisted memories and tortured emotions started to wash closer to the oblivious men. Both George and the young boy shuffled back, sensing but not seeing the corruption that was slowly filling the hall.

Spring Trap laughed inwardly as George's face pulled into a tight frown and Tim's eyes widened. It was delicious how fear reduced everyone to the same animal.

They started to move away, George making a noticeable effort to keep as much distance between Tim and the inert mechanical body as possible. He watched the mascot. It watched him back.

"I've got an opening around five-ish tomorrow if that would be good?"

The little troop turned and started towards the exit as they finalized their plans.

"Oh yeah dude totally. I'll be here to let you in again."

The voices started to fade as the four started toward the exit, all unaware of the spectral tide that was creeping along behind them. The phantoms of horror and pain that had stained Fazbear and its progenitor swam through his corruption, finding a new haunt in the walls of Fazbear fright.

Spring Trap watched as Josh and Nathan discussed the plans for the twisted attraction, the other two following quietly with a quicker pace to their strides.

"I'll drop by Peter's again next week. He's never gone longer than a couple of days."

Spring Trap smirked into the shadows.

Josh opened the door and George pushed Tim out a little more forcefully than was obviously intended. Neither the boy nor the man dared to look back as they disappeared outside.

He lay unmoving as the door slowly creaked shut. The slam echoed down the corridor and left him alone, comfortable in his sin. He heard them lock the door, waiting for the last click before rolling over and clawing his way upright. He hunched over like a wounded animal and studied his new home, feeling the corridors, rooms and vents through the sickness he'd spread. They had done a good job of melding the aesthetics and elements of the Fazbear history together. It was like a twisted shrine of horror, a shrine to everything he had wrought. He liked it.

He spotted a camera perched not so discreetly in the far corner of the corridor, Nathan's earlier mutterings of the late night security guard echoed through his head.

The cold in the air grew heavy.

He liked it here. It would be his hell and he would welcome any soul who stumbled in.


End file.
